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Why do some nations prosper and become a force for good in the world while others decline and disappear from history? Listen to this lesson to learn that God’s Word lays out how a nation can implode by allowing passions and immorality to be uncontrolled. Hear the sins that are an attack on the divine institutions of marriage and family. Learn common myths about homosexuality and the answer to those myths both from science and the Bible. Finally listen to six things that Christians can do in light of this Supreme Court decision, including praying without ceasing and letting our views be known in the marketplace.

Series:Marriage and Freedom in America - Independence Day Special (2015)

Truth vs. Propaganda and What to Do About it Marriage and Freedom in America – Part 04 July 9, 2015www.deanbibleministries.org

Before we get started we’ll have a few moments of silent prayer so you can make sure you’re spiritually prepared to study the Word this evening. To confess means to admit or acknowledge any sin to God and instantly you’re forgiven of those sins and cleansed of all unrighteousness and restored to your walk by the Spirit that you may continue to grow spiritually. Let’s pray.

“Father, we’re so grateful that we can come together this evening to study Your Word and be reminded that many things change on a day-by-day basis in the world around us. Your will and Your Word never changes. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. With the vagaries in the economy, the vagaries with the rulings of what the law means from one year to another, and all of these things change. But You never change and Your Word never changes. Father, as we continue this study understanding the relationship of marriage and freedom and the implications of this law, we pray that You might strengthen and encourage us from the knowledge that we learn and that we might be able to use that as we are engaged in conversations about why we, as Christians, take the stand that we do. And Father we pray that you would help us to be a faithful witness and shine as light in the midst of a wicked and perverse generation. We pray this in Christ’s name. Amen.”

Tonight I want to wrap up this study. The focus has been on marriage and freedom in the United States. We derive our freedom inherently because we are created in the image and likeness of God. This was recognized in the Declaration of Independence. That verbiage is that these are unalienable rights that are given to us by our Creator so that language means something. It is not just words on a page. It is not just something that just an old bunch of dead, white guys wrote, but it has significance. These are things that are ours regardless of government.

Our government has historically recognized that we have these rights but these rights do not come from the government. Now that is an important thing for us to understand. As I have gone through these lessons what I am focusing on is the way the Founding Fathers thought, what their framework was in terms of a Judeo-Christian worldview, a theist worldview. Some of the things they said that should help us to think through how we think about the law and how we think about the Constitution would be different from the way a lot of people think about it, if they ever think about the law. They look at the law as something that really is something that just represents the current popular things to be in favor of but that is not the purpose of law or the purpose of government.

So we are looking at that and we are looking at the Word of God but we are also looking at specifics and understanding the divine institution of marriage. We talked about the high value that the Bible places on marriage and it defines marriage a specific way and that freedom flows from that marriage. When I talk about marriage and freedom it is through marriage that we propagate the species, the next generation in the nation. It is through that family that we have education to pass on the values from one generation to another. The generation that fails to do that is the generation that begins the slide into the chaos and collapse of any national entity.

(Slide 3) Hosea was a writing prophet in the Old Testament. He is listed among what is sometimes referred to as the Minor Prophets but that is only because they are smaller books. He writes in judgment, a statement of God against the Southern Kingdom, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” When we do not know the Word of God and the principles of the Word of God, it destroys us internally. Once a nation is destroyed internally, that leads to an internal collapse. That internal destruction is the outgrowth of letting the passions and the lust patterns of the sin nature run uncontrolled.

Part of the responsibility of the government is to impose a certain level of morality, for law represents at some level morality. That does not mean that the law is legislating every moral decision but that laws reflect a moral or ethical framework and it is to provide for the rise and pursuit of virtue as we have seen statements from the Founding Fathers in the past. When we reject that as a people, as a nation, it eats away at the soul of a nation. When that happens it leads to a nation manifesting the same characteristics of arrogance and of self-absorption and self-justification and self-indulgence that are indicated from an individual sin nature, and when a nation turns to the pursuit of self the result is always going to be self-destruction.

So Hosea announced, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge [God said to Judah], I also will reject you from being priest for Me; Because you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children.” This is an announcement that the judgment of 586 B.C. would come. The 2nd Temple would be destroyed. Jerusalem would be destroyed. The people of God, living in what was left of the land of Judah, would be taken out of the land as God’s punishment for their idolatry, but also because they were committing all of the abominations. That is not just sexual sins because as we saw last time the word abomination describes a range of sins; all the abominations of the Canaanites. Just as God removed the Canaanites from the land, so God was now going to remove Israel from the land.

(Slide 4) When we get into the New Testament we see a statement by Paul. At issue here is not just a lack of knowledge but there is a spiritual dimension. 2 Corinthians 4:4, “Whose minds the god of this age has blinded.” So there is a spiritual warfare component to this. As people give themselves over to sin, then this opens the opportunity for Satan to have greater influence in a culture. This is what we have seen recently. As has been my habit in the last few lessons, I want to just review some more quotes from the Founding Fathers. (Slide 5) This is a quote from Federalist Paper #51. Remember the Federalist papers were written as a form of debate in the process of adopting the current Constitution. If you’ve never read them, I encourage you to read them and read the Anti-Federalist papers to come to a better understanding of why we have the form of government as a republican form of government, as a republic, not republican in the sense of one party, but it is a republic.

Madison wrote, “But what is government but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?” So what is human nature? Human nature is both the pursuit of virtue from just a human viewpoint, human good in terms of the sin nature, but it is also the pursuit of evil. The Founding Fathers had a robust doctrine of sin. We do not have that any more. Because the Founding Fathers operated within a Judeo-Christian worldview, they had an understanding of the depravity of man. That is why they put safeguards on government, because they knew that absolute power would corrupt absolutely. So they put built-in safeguards to prevent any one branch of government from becoming too powerful. So that the legislative branch would be checked by the executive branch and the judicial branch. And the judicial branch would be checked by the legislative and executive branches.

The problem would be if any one branch got too much power, then the liberty of the people would be threatened. The one branch that has gained too much power because it seems to be the branch that does not really have a check on it anymore is the judicial branch. The way the Constitution was written, they recognized that they did not cover all the bases and that there were weaknesses within the Constitution but they built in a way of self-correction. That way was not to have the judiciary impose legislation on the people. That is where we have come recently.

This is part of the problem that many of us have with the Supreme Court decision a couple of weeks ago related to same-sex marriage. It is legislating from the bench. It is not just making an umpire call and saying that some law is unconstitutional and then throwing it back to the states or to the legislature to fix it. They actually introduced legislative verbiage into their decision. The process should have been thrown back to the states and if there was going to be a change; it should have been done through an amendment with regard to how the people viewed same-sex marriage. This should have been allowed to work itself out in a democratic process. The judiciary stepping in and making the decision was, in effect, shortcutting the will of the people and imposing the will of five on the nation. That is why they are referred to as activist judges.

Another term that is sometimes used for this is positive law. That is the technical, legal term. It comes out of the late 19th century and it comes out of the idea that justices were to, instead of just ruling that something was in bounds or out of bounds like an umpire or referee in a game, they were to add new requirements to the law. They were to make positive input into the law. That is crossing over into the role of the judiciary.

(Slide 6) Washington warned about this. He said, “If in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the Constitutional powers be at any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment the way the Constitution designates.” In other words if there is a problem there, such as related to slavery and other things that have been corrected through amendments, if there is “any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment the way the Constitution designates.” It has a self-correcting mechanism. “But let there be no change by usurpation.” We’ve seen this, not just in this recent decision, but there have been a number of decisions going back into the early 19th century where there were decisions by the judiciary. This decision, I believe, was arguably as bad as the Dred Scott decision.

He says, “But let there be no change by usurpation; though this may in one instance be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.” Just because it is a good thing they did or people think it is, they are stepping outside their role and responsibility and the end never justifies the means. So a right thing, and for argument’s sake we’re going to say it was a right thing, done in a wrong way is still wrong. And this was done in a wrong way.

(Slide 7) Now Jefferson recognized the problem here. He says that when we study the law and the Constitution we have to go back and understand it within the original intent of the Founding Fathers. He said we are to, “Carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit in the debates.” That’s why we should read these debates that are printed out in the Federalist papers and the Anti-Federalist Papers and, “Recollect the spirit in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.” See if I did that in the pulpit with the Bible we call that eisegesis. You are reading something into the text that is not there.

That is what happened in the decision related to Obamacare last week when they read into the regulations into Obamacare that it was not just setting up these exchanges in the states but they were to set up, even though you do not see it written there, it also meant the federal government, as well. See they are reading something into the text. That is what Jefferson is referring to here. “Trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.” In other words, they are trying to get their view into the document. (Slide 8) He warned then that the Constitution could be “A mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please.” This is what we are witnessing.

(Slide 9) Now Clarence Thomas stated the proper way of interpretation in an address to the Manhattan Institute in 2008 where he says, “Let me put it this way; there are really only two ways to interpret the Constitution—try to discern as best we can what the framers intended or make it up. Those are the only two options.” See, what the other side says is “There is no way we can get into the heads of the writers of the Constitution.” Oh really. We have the Federalist papers, the Anti-Federalist Papers, their diaries, their letters, and their speeches. We have more information about what they thought and why they thought it the way they did than we have just about any other period in history. We can get into their head and find out exactly what they meant, just as we can get into the head of the writers of Scripture and understand what the Scripture means. It is going back and taking things apart, understanding the history, understanding the background, and understanding the language.

So this is the issue. Are we going to be people of the rule of law, going back to what the Constitution meant, or are we constantly going to change it? If we change it, that leaves us in a position of legal instability because what we think is true for today may not be true in five years. We cannot plan. There is a certain level of instability and uncertainty that begins to creep into a nation.

Last time we looked at what the Bible said. (Slide 10) The Bible talks about homosexuality as a sin. In Leviticus it says it is an abomination. Now some people have taken this out of context as I pointed out last time and they want to use this word abomination to try to reclassify this sin of homosexuality as some type of unforgiveable sin or hyper-destructive sin and they make it much worse than any other sin. That really distorts the Bible.

When we look at this word abomination and trace it through the Scripture, as I pointed out last time when I gave many more Scriptures, the word abomination the same word is used to describe seven things the Lord abominates in Proverbs 6:16–19. (Slide 11) A proud look, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood [murder], a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that are swift in running to evil [someone always looking to cause trouble and commit crime], a false witness who speaks lies [a sin of the tongue], and one who sows discord among brethren [someone who uses libel and slander which are also sins of the tongue].

The word abomination is used to describe a whole range of sins and homosexuality is just one of those particular sins. Like adultery and fornication it is a sin that is an attack and an assault on two divine institutions, marriage and the family. Under the Mosaic Law, which was the constitution for the nation of Israel, it was a capital crime. It was to be punished by death. That was not necessarily true for other nations. The Mosaic Law was not designed for other nations. It was only designed as a rule of law for Israel and that law ended when Israel ended in A.D. 70. The Law, as a ceremonial law, ended with the death of Christ on the Cross and it is no longer in effect. Christ was the end of the Law.

(Slide 12) I pointed out some passages. Romans 1:18 is one of the central text identifying the role of homosexuality of the decline and deterioration of a nation. When a nation rejects God, Romans 1:18, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” The more a nation suppresses truth, the more they live in their own psychotic fantasy world, the more divorced from reality they are, the more they try to redefine reality against what God has created, the more they become like Romans 1:19 and following.

Men began to worship the creature rather than the Creator. They became fools. They may be bright in terms of their degrees they have, in terms of their I.Q. but they are fools because they are living as if there is no God. So what does God do? God says, “You want to live that way? Sure, I’ll let you go. I will give you free rein and you can follow your head and do what you want to do and you will see what the consequences are.” So in Romans 1:24 it says, “Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves.” This indicates sexual sin.

(Slide 13) Romans 1:26, “For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural”—lesbianism. Romans 1:27, “And in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another.” What this tells us is that God is not going to judge us for homosexuality or the legalization of same-sex marriage or the liberalism of laws related to homosexuality. Those actions are the judgment of God on a nation that has already turned their back on Him.

Do not get those things reversed. God gives us over to those things because we have already rejected Him. They are the punishment. They are the judgment of God because they will lead to further destruction in the nation. (Slide 14) Then I pointed out 1 Timothy 1:9–10 which lists two sins in verse 10, immoral men and homosexuals amongst a range of sins. Those who kill their fathers and mothers, murderers, kidnapers, liars, perjurers.

(Slide 15) The word for immoral is the word PORNOS from which we get pornography. PORNOS can refer to fornication or immorality. It is any kind of sexual act that occurs outside the bonds of marriage, involves sex between two partners who are not married, whether it is homosexual or heterosexual. (Slide 16) The other word, homosexual is the word ARSENOKOITES which refers to male and KOITE where we get our word coitus which is the word for sexual intercourse, so this refers to sexual intercourse between two males. It is clearly identifying homosexuality as a sin just like all of these other sins.

(Slide 17) We find this same language in 1 Corinthians 6:9. Now this is not talking about loss of salvation or salvation as I pointed out last time. It is talking about rewards for believers. Those in Corinth came out of a background that was quite permissive and licentious. Homosexuality, immorality, temple prostitution were the norm. Everyone accepted it. It was the standard. But when they became believers some of them continued in that licentious lifestyle whereas some continued to grow and mature. This is what Paul is talking about here. He says, “Do not be deceived.” Continuing to live a permissive and licentious lifestyle, along with all of these other sins, is a result of deception. Satan, the god of this age, blinding men to the truth. We do not understand the gospel. We do not understand its implications.

(Slide 18) So the warning is, neither fornicators PORNOS again, nor idolaters, nor adulterers MOICHOS [distinct from fornication, unfaithful to a covenant, applied to those unfaithful to God or spiritual adulterers]. That is what it means to be a spiritual adulterer. It does not mean to listen to some other pastor-teacher. It means to disobey God and be in pursuit of other forms of religion. So those who are unfaithful to God are spiritual adulterers, sexually it refers to those who are married and engage in sex with someone to whom they are not married, whether it is someone of the same sex or opposite sex.

(Slide 19) Homosexuals is the next word. It is a different word than we had earlier. It is MALAKOS which was a term which referred to someone who was effeminate or soft to the touch. It was used to describe clothing that was made of soft materials or fine textures. So it was applied to those who were homosexuals but were effeminate in their homosexuality.

(Slide 20) Then the next term is sodomites which is the term we saw before ARSENOKOITES. So these terms are listed among those who are covetous, idolaters, those who are drunkards, those who are revilers, extortioners so it is listed in a group of sins.

(Slide 21) What happened in this country is that once you switched from theism which is a worldview that recognizes that the world was created by an eternal, omnipotent God. That God created everything in the world. How that is done can differ within theism. It is a broad category but as the Creator, God has the right to set laws, physical laws such as the law of gravity, the laws of thermodynamics, as well as laws related to morality. These laws related to morality are embedded within the social structure of human beings because we are created in His image and likeness even if that image and likeness has been corrupted by sin.

When we ask the question of how we got to where we are today from the views of the Founding Fathers we have to understand that we have gone through at least three worldview shifts since the Founding Fathers. They were theistic. We went through a shift to naturalism. We went through a shift to modernism, which some could argue is a form of naturalism, and then we went to postmodernism.

Naturalism, modernism, and postmodernism have a lot in common. Theism looks at man this way in this chart. This is how the Founding Fathers looked at man and the human race but they are all distorted by sin. We are all corrupted by sin and if there are not certain restraints placed upon us through education, through the law, then we will default to our corrupt position. We will pursue that which lacks virtue. We will seek to unbridle our passions and to create moral chaos.

In naturalism there is no such thing as sin. Everything is good. It just differs on its relative impact upon society, whatever is, is okay. So there is absolutely no sense of right or wrong in terms of anything other than a pragmatic sense. Under theism homosexual attraction is abnormal. There are cases in the Continental Army when George Washington brought men up on charges of homosexuality and they were kicked out of the army. This was their view at that time. In naturalism, they believe homosexual attraction is normal. Under theism all homosexual activity is sin. A person may have a proclivity in that direction but unless he acts upon it, it is not sin just as someone may have a proclivity toward adultery but it is not adultery unless it is acted upon. Someone may have a proclivity to murder, but unless they actually murder someone they have not committed a crime. In naturalism all homosexual activity is okay.

In theism there is forgiveness for all sin and change is possible because sin is the result of individual choice and personal volition. Therefore the individual is responsible for the choices that he makes. Under naturalism there is no guilt and change is not possible. It is just the way you are. These views on naturalism are often promoted in classrooms where the professors are completely dominated by naturalistic worldviews and they seek to promote these views to students and to convince them of their ways.

(Slide 22) As they do that they communicate a number of myths about homosexuality. Thirty or forty years ago these myths were beginning to really ramp up and a lot of people did not have answers to them so some people began to be convinced. As the decades went by more and more people became convinced because these myths became promoted by the mainline, mainstream media. The gay rights groups were very effective in the way they promoted their propaganda.

In a lot of ways conservative and Bible-believing Christians were not very effective in the way they communicated what the Bible taught. Among Christians, part of that problem is that a lot of Christians are just plain arrogant and legalistic and judgmental. That just made matters worse rather than improving anything. What I want to do is just look at some of these myths.

The first myth is that homosexuality is normal, healthy, and desirable. What is, is okay. That is naturalism. There is no such thing as sin so it is normal and it is natural because this is the way they are born. That is the second myth that homosexuals are born that way. They just had that homosexual gene. It does not matter that no one has discovered it, that there is no study to support it. Everyone just seems to think there is a gay gene out there and we just have not looked long enough or hard enough to find it.

Another myth is that there really are a lot of homosexuals. Up until recently the view that was usually promoted by the mainstream was that homosexuals make up about 10% of the population. They have been so effective in their propaganda that in several recent polls over the last ten years since at least 2002 the American populace, which does not really look in to these things very closely, has shown that they are of the opinion that there are a lot of homosexuals in America, somewhere between 23–25% are homosexuals. That has a great impact on people. They may be like this and maybe, if I have four children, one of them is going to be gay and I want them to be happy and fulfilled and be married. I may not like it. I may not like homosexuality but I want my son or daughter who is going to be born this way and cannot do anything about it, I want them to be happy. That just sounds so loving and so caring. That is how they’ve been educated by our culture. But this is actually just a myth.

The fourth myth taught is that change is impossible. (Slide 23) So let’s look at the first one, that homosexuality is normal, healthy, and desirable. A statement from Peri Jude Radecic, a member of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force as stated on Nightline, homosexuality is not an illness, it is not something that needs to be cured. We are normal, natural, and healthy people. That is the myth they promote. That is their view.

(Slide 24) The Bible says, “Not so fast.” Romans 1:24–32, as I’ve mentioned already states that every human being is distorted. They are corrupted. They are warped by the Fall. They are sinners. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Every Christian is a sinner. They are just forgiven because they trusted in Christ as Savior. Just because something feels “right” does not make it right.

How many times have we heard people say, “I love so-and-so and it just feels right?” This statement is made by homosexuals, heterosexuals, puppy love, or whatever it is. They think the feeling is so overwhelming that it has to be right because it feels right. That is applied to homosexuality. But the Bible says just because something feels right does not make it right and homosexuality is neither natural nor normal.

(Slide 25) Up until 1973 the American Psychological Association (APA) classified homosexuality as a mental disorder in their big book of mental disorders. Due to pressure from the Gay Rights Movement, and it was intense pressure, the APA declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder. A lot of this goes back to understanding of what it means to be normal. They were trying to say that homosexuality is really normal. To someone who is born blind, blind seems normal. To someone born with any defect, that defect seems normal to them. They have never known anything different. Just because it feels normal does not make it normal. They tried to take their disorder and make it normal and they succeeded.

This decision was preceded by three years of protests, disruptions, and chaos. Psychologists were called up and threats were made. They were intimidated and when the vote finally came, only 25% of the APA voted and 58% of those voted in favor of removal so it would not be classified as a mental disorder anymore. Now anyone with any sense of objectivity realizes that is a terrible circumstance and is not objective.

(Slide 26) Dr. Charles Socarides, who was at the meetings and was an expert in the area of homosexuality and had treated homosexuals for over 20 years, describes the atmosphere leading up to the 1973 vote. He said, “Militant homosexual groups continued to attack any psychiatrist or psychoanalyst who dared to present his findings as to the psychopathology of homosexuality before national or local meetings of psychiatrists or in public forums.” They were threatened and intimidated. In fact, he said the final decision was “the medical hoax of the century.” That is quite a claim.

(Slide 27) In 1977 there was a survey of 10,000 members of the APA and here are the results of the survey. 10,000 members were polled at random. 69% said that homosexuality is a pathological adaptation. That means of those 10,000 69% still thought it should be classified as a mental disorder. 18% disagreed. That’s an exceptionally small number. But if 25% voted the first time and 58% of that 25% approved it that would pretty much come close to the 18% that disagreed in this particular study. 13% were uncertain. This idea that it is normal is only classified that way through a fraudulent move to force it out of the manual of mental disorders.

(Slide 28) Another example of why they are not normal, healthy, or desirable is that only 12% are “relatively monogamous” or “relatively less promiscuous” according to the Institute for Sex Research. 60% have more than 250 lifetime sex partners. It boggles the mind. 28% have more than 1,000 lifetime sex partners. 79% admit that more than half are total strangers. Lesbians are less promiscuous than men, but are more volatile and unstable in their relationships. Let me suggest this is not normal or healthy.

(Slide 29) The Bible says that any sexual activity outside of marriage is fornication and sin. It is not to be accepted or legitimized. There are 44 references to fornication in the Bible in the context of sin. Homosexuality is never mentioned in a positive context. We really had a worldview shift when homosexuality was declassified as a mental disorder. Homosexuals began to think of themselves in a different way. If what you are doing is not a sin, then you are really okay.

(Slide 30) Congressman William Dennemeyer commented, “If homosexuality is a perversion of what is natural, then homosexuals must look at their own conduct in an entirely different light and explain it in less satisfying terms.” If you’re ok and I’m ok and our sins are not a problem, then we do not have to think about improving our lot and pursuing virtue. What I have shown here it that it is not normal. It is not healthy and it is not desirable.

(Slide 31) The second myth about homosexuality is that homosexuals are born that way. We have all heard that. We have heard it in news media, a lot of television shows and if you even question that today you are looked at if you have just grown a pair of devil’s horns. You are an idiot from the backwoods of some hilly state with a lot of hillbillies in it. You are backward. But there is no evidence of a gay gene at all. Just think of it biologically. If there were a gay gene, it would not get passed on to the next generation. If it did manage to get passed on to a couple of generations, it would soon die out.

This claim that there was a gay gene was based in a 1991 study by Dr. Simon Levay. A couple of things that you should know about this is that it was a flawed study. His research consisted of studying the brains of 41 cadavers. So he has 41 dead bodies, including 19 homosexual males. So he has a hair less than 50% of homosexual males. He found “a tiny area believed to control sexual activity” [notice the key word there is believed], the hypothalamus was less than half the size in the gay men than in the heterosexuals. The question there is what comes first, the perversion or the smaller hypothalamus? All you can do is maybe note that something is there.

The study was seized by many as irrefutable evidence by many that homosexuals were born gay, something that the homosexual community had been claiming for years. However, instead of resolving the debate, it just intensified it. Johns Hopkins University psychologist, John Money, sometimes called the Dean of American sexology, said the real question was when did it get there. Was it prenatal, neonatal, during childhood, or during puberty, which we do not know. Other problems with the study include that all 19 of the homosexual men had died of AIDS, something that many researchers believe could very well account for or contribute to the difference.

Second, there was no way to know the sexual history of the heterosexual men. Third, there is no way to discern if the smaller hypothalamuses were the cause or the result of homosexuality. Fourth, Dr. Levay, a homosexual himself, admitted that his study was not entirely a dispassionate, scientific endeavor.

Furthermore we have twin studies. There have been eight major studies. This came out in December of last year that eight major studies of identical twins in Australia, the United States, and Scandinavia during the last two decades all came to the same conclusion that gays were not born that way.

(Slide 32) Here’s a quote from William H. Masters, co-director of the Masters and Johnson Institute [a name that should be familiar to us who lived through the 70s and 80s], “The genetic theory of homosexuality has been generally discarded today.” Who knew? Somebody ought to call up ABC, NBC, and CBS and let them know.

(Slide 33) John DeCecco, professor of psychology at San Francisco State University [notice the location, not Houston, Texas or Nacogdoches, Texas or Baylor in Waco, Texas in the heart of the Bible belt.] This is a professor of psychology at San Francisco State and the editor of the 25-volume Journal of Homosexuality in a 1989 USA Today article stated, “The idea that people are born into one type of sexual behavior is entirely foolish. Homosexuality is a behavior, not a condition, and something that some people can and do change, just like they sometimes change other tastes and personality traits.”

Somebody needs to tell some of the higher courts about this that have found some of these groups that seek to help those who are homosexual and wish to become heterosexual to change their identity that this is possible. The idea today is that it is not possible and anyone who wants to do this have some very successful groups, like among Orthodox Jews. There are successful groups among Christians who succeed in this.

(Slide 34) In 1991 there was a study by Bailey and Pillard that said that there were “self-admitted methodological flaws.” The subjects were recruited through advertisements in homosexual periodicals and so that study has been discredited. Then, as I stated earlier, findings from eight major twin studies in Australia, the U.S., and Scandinavia over the last twenty years concur: gays were not born that way.

Let me just read a little bit from this article. Dr. Neal Whitehead, a PhD who worked for the New Zealand government as a scientific researcher for 24 years and then spent four years working for the United Nations International Energy Agency, said “at best genetics is a minor factor.” He pointed out that identical twins have the same genes and the same DNA. They are nurtured in identical conditions. If homosexuality is caused by genetics or prenatal conditions, if one twin is gay, then the co-twin should also be gay. Because they have identical DNA it ought to be 100%, but the studies reveal something else. If an identical twin has same-sex attraction, the chances that the co-twin has it are only about 11% for men and 14% for women.” This puts the nail in the coffin for the idea that there is a genetic condition that makes you homosexual. It is an interesting article. You can Google it and come up with all of the different statistics and all the different conclusions that they come up with. His conclusion is that sexual orientation is not set in concrete. “If genetics were the determinate, then the results would need to be 100% in concordance.”

(Slide 35) Recently the American Psychological Association [the same group who said homosexuality was not a disorder back in 1973] has said, “There is no consensus among scientists about the exact reasons that an individual develops a heterosexual, bisexual, gay, or lesbian orientation. Although much research [notice that they have been researching this for 40 or 50 years and they cannot come up with any connection whatsoever. None. Zero.] has examined the possible genetic, hormonal, developmental, social, and cultural influences on sexual orientation, no findings have emerged that permit scientists to conclude that sexual orientation is determined by any particular factor or factors. Many think that nature and nurture both play complex roles.”

Now there is an article that was published on the Federalist website put up within the last couple of days. I put a link on the Dean Bible Ministries Facebook page this evening and the argument from the author of this is that it is not nature, which would mean that you are automatically determined to be homosexual and it is not nature [which would put the blame on the way the parents trained you or some environmental factor.] We need another hypothesis. Let’s try something that scientists refuse to accept. They do not have any evidence that what they want to say, nature or nurture, but it cannot be volition. That is what he argues.

It is volition. It is not that there is a moment when a young child says, “I like boys and I’m a boy or I’m a girl and I like girls.” They make hundreds of thousands of other emotional decisions along the way that sort of sets the stage for that kind of attractions later on in life. It is the result of hundreds of thousands of micro decisions. We all make them. We are not volitionally conscious until we are two or three and then it is just minimal. We know if we make the wrong decision we might get spanked or might get sent to our room or we might have some kind of quiet time, whatever they call it. That is when we begin to become volitionally conscious. But we have already made thousands of decisions by that time. We have reacted to things. We have seen things we like and do not like. We have seen people do things that we like or we do not like and that sets the stage for situations that occur later in life. It is very complex. This guy does a great job of at least presenting a hypothetical model for how this develops on the basis of volition.

(Slide 36) Now the third myth is that homosexuals make up 10% of the population. In USA Today about 10 years ago they said there were 25 million homosexuals in the United States. That is roughly the number of conservative evangelicals in the United States. The Washington Times said that about 10% of men and 5% of women were homosexual. The American Psychiatric Association said it was about 10%. So this was an accepted number until recently.

(Slide 37) This number comes from a 1948 study by William Kinsey where 25% of the 5,300 people he studied turned out to be prison inmates. 44% had had homosexual relations in prison so he has a tainted group to begin with. In fact, he included several hundred male prostitutes in his study so he misrepresented the number. (Slide 38) He concluded that 10% of white males were more or less exclusively homosexual for at least three years between ages 16 and 65.

(Slide 39) Then there was the Forman study in 1984–1988 that said it was 1.7%, which is what they concluded studying the culture. What is interesting is that a recent poll came up that I’ve read within the last month, a Gallup poll that said that Americans today believe that the number is between 23 and 25%. Well, of course they do. One out of every 4 actors on any television show has to be homosexual. This has been going on since at least Will and Grace as a sitcom about 10 years or so ago. It had a main character that was homosexual. This has colored the way Americans look at homosexuality.

Americans are basically good, fair-minded people. If 25% of us are homosexual, then, goodness, we do not want to take away their rights. But if only 1.7% are male homosexuals and fewer than that are lesbians, then we have got a really different story. So the gay community has managed to propagandize the American people into thinking that one out of every four people, just look around at your house and the house next door, and probably one person ought to be homosexual. But they are not.

(Slide 40) Then there is the 2013 NHIS study which gained a lot of coverage in the media. It was collected in 2013 from 34,557 adults aged 18 and over, 96.6% of adults identified as straight. Who knew? We do not have that many homosexuals. 1.6% identified as gay or lesbian. That fits with numerous studies over the last 40 years going back to Kinsey. He got the number wrong because he had a tainted pool from which he was taking his information. 0.7% identified themselves as bisexual. The remaining 1.1% of adults identified as “something else” [0.2%] stated, I don’t know the answer or refused to provide an answer.

CDC caught a lot of flak for this, as well, because they were asked what business it was of theirs to collect information on sexual information. Well, there is a lot because there is a high level of sexually transmitted diseases that occur within the homosexual community. It is the CDC’s job to track diseases and in tracking diseases they are tracking the populations most likely to transmit those diseases. “More specifically, the study indicated, 1.8% of men self-identified as gay and 0.4% as bisexual, and 1.5% of woman as lesbian and 0.9% as bisexual.” The authority for this is that “conservative” newspaper, The Washington Post, published in an article on July 15, 2014. So that is the third myth.

(Slide 41) The fourth myth is that change is impossible. This is just flat not true. There are a huge number of testimonials from ex-gays. They will tell you that they changed and that it was possible to change because the ultimate issue is volitional. I have an e-mail here and I want to read this e-mail because I think it is indicative of at least one person. This is a person who spent a lot of time in her formative years being taught the Word of God. Then as she got into her adolescence she became tempted in the area of lesbianism and when this ruling came down a couple of weeks ago, a male friend of hers, normal, heterosexual male, was just saying this is a really good decision. She wrote this e-mail to him to explain why it was not a good decision. This was sent to me and she gave me permission to use it.

She says, “First things first. God is our Creator. We are made in His image. When He created us, He gave us free will, volition to accept on our own accord His merciful gift of salvation or to decline it. Now that being said, as newborns, we are sinners but until we reach the age of accountability where we can fully understand who Christ is and what He has done for all mankind, He does not condemn that child before that happens. God does not predestine any child to be marked with a specific sin. What it is is that every single person is born with something. We are all born with a sin nature. Every person in this world is unique so naturally everyone’s sin nature tempts them in different ways. Everyone struggles with certain sins more than other sins because Satan knows that is where they are weak.”

She continues, “My biggest weakness is homosexuality. I struggle with it the most because I’m so weak there. Lying to myself which I still do as everyone does that it’s not as big a deal because it’s my biggest weakness. Just like other people are lifelong thieves, that’s their biggest area of weakness. We’re not born gay. We’re born with weakness which we choose to give into, especially if someone has lacked the proper teaching. Since we’re made in God’s image, saying we’re born gay, is implying that God is a homosexual which is absolutely horrible. I say that because if we’re born that way, it’s in our DNA, it’s not a problem of our sin nature which makes it acceptable sounding because it would be part of the image God created us. That is unacceptable because God is perfect and He has no sin. I grew up knowing what was right and wrong. I had the right teaching.”

Then she goes on to say, “I threw up after my first homosexual experience because I was so conflicted about it. Even my body knew how wrong it was but I gave in and kept distancing myself further from God where it now feels normal. If I ever tried to reverse it, I would have the same physical reaction. Now my sexual immorality has such a hold on me that it has changed the chemistry of my brain and makes it feel normal.” There’s a way to reverse it because God says you can. Just like you can get addicted to drugs and other things that have a bio impact on your brain, you start making the right decisions and it reverses things and goes in the other decisions. This is a young woman who is trying to make those very courageous decisions to turn her life around.

(Slide 41) There are numerous Christian ministries that help those with sexuality. We have to realize that with the Spirit of God and the Word of God all sin can be dealt with. If you are still alive and you are homosexual and giving into those desires, then God can change you. That is what grace is all about through the power of the Word of God and the Spirit of God.

(Slide 42) Why are same sex relationships wrong? First of all, they are an attempt to meet legitimate needs for acceptance, approval, and affection in illegitimate, ungodly ways. They are outside God’s created intention for sex: the complementarity of male and female, physically, emotionally, and spiritually is God’s design. That is the only way you can have the true union that God is talking about when He says that the two are to leave father and mother and become one flesh. And third, marriage is an earthbound illustration of Christ and the Church—the unity of two different entities. To claim that homosexual marriage is legitimate is a blasphemous statement against the nature of the Church and its relation to the Lord Jesus Christ.

(Slide 43) Same sex relations are wrong because they are idolatrous according to Romans 1. It is the worship of the creature through sex instead of the Creator. This makes them destructive and dangerous and legitimizing it creates a façade of normalcy.

(Slide 44) What I want to do here is show that the homosexual lifestyle is not parallel to a heterosexuality. This is what the culture wants us to think, that they are the same. That they are interchangeable but they are not. In heterosexual marriage 57% of marriages last over twenty years there is stability. In homosexual relationships the average length is 2–3 years and only 5% last over 20 years. There is no stability there so when you think about rearing children in that environment it is an environment in which there is no stability and no permanence and therefore it is harmful to children.

(Slide 45) In a heterosexual marriage 77% of men and 88% of woman are faithful to marriage vows. In homosexual relationships, promiscuity rules. They have hundreds of sexual partners over their lifetimes. (Slide 46) In a heterosexual marriage the two are in a committed relationship. It is faithful and it is stable. But in homosexual relationships, men have 3–5 outside partners according to studies in the U.S. and 8 in Holland that last less than five years and not one monogamous relationship. Lesbian relationships are extremely volatile and they have a lot of domestic and emotional violence.

According to a study I read the other night on lesbian marriages in Scandinavia they are less than half as stable as male homosexual marriages which are less as stable as heterosexual unions. (Slide 47) Reverend Troy Perry, founder of the Metropolitan Community Church which is a gay Christian church. That is not your Spring Branch Community Church or your Alvin Community Church, it is a homosexual church—comments: “Monogamy is not a word the gay community uses. We talk about fidelity. That means you live in a loving, caring, honest relationship with your partner. Because we can’t marry, we have people with widely varying opinions as to what that means. Some would say that committed couples could have multiple sexual partners as long as there’s no deception. Each couple has to decide.”

(Slide 48) Heterosexual marriage couples live longer and have happier lives. In homosexual relationships they have problems with AIDS, high risk of STDs, 3× the rate of alcoholism and drug abuse, much more promiscuity and domestic violence, and a shortened lifespan. (Slide 49) In heterosexual marriage, marriage is the best possible place for children but homosexual relationships puts kids at risk. Not risk for sexual abuse per se, but risk at growing up in an unstable and uncertain home. That is not going to be true of everyone, but it is true in the vast majority.

(Slide 50) Let’s look at Scripture. Isaiah 5:20 says, “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil. Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; Who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” Woe is an announcement for judgment from God in the Scriptures.

(Slide 51) Can a homosexual be saved? Of course. Homosexuality is not an issue in salvation. No sin is an issue in salvation. The issue is believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. If you are saved, the issue is learning to walk by the Spirit. It is not what your trends are, what your passions are, what your lust patterns are. Every Christian struggles with “sins that easily beset us” [Hebrews 12:1]. We have to recognize that Christians can be bigots, adulterers, liars, thieves, and murderers.

(Slide 52) Now to take us back to a point I made at the very beginning. The problem with this law is the law. The First Amendment of the Bill of Rights says that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion of prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” (Slide 53) What are we going to do about this because you already have cases, one case in Mississippi, another in South Carolina where civil servants, county clerks, have resigned their jobs because they are Christians and they do not want to perform same-sex marriage. I do not know their situations but if we as believers cave in, guess who is going to win? There are legal groups out there—Liberty Legal, the Alliance Defense Fund, and a number of other groups—who will take on these cases. They will go to court and they will take you through the court. We have to be willing to follow the patterns of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. We have to be willing to pledge our honor, our fortune, and our lives for freedom. You may be a Christian that is living in a situation where you are going to have to decide if you are going to serve the Lord and quit or serve the Lord and stand your ground in an extremely difficult challenging situation where you will be vilified and you will be targeted but you will be serving the body of Christ and the cause of liberty in this nation. There are a couple of country clerks in Kentucky that I read about the other day who are standing their ground. More power to them because they want to take the case all the way to the Supreme Court.

There is this situation with these folks who had a bakery in Oregon where the judge told them to sit down and shut up. He put a gag order not to talk about it after he had imposed the fine; not a gag order during the court. They are not going to follow suit. That is a violation of their 1st Amendment rights. They are going to do the right thing. This has to be adjudicated in the courts. Just because a decision was made by the Supreme Court it does not mean it is set in stone. The Dred Scott decision was overturned. The amendment for prohibition of alcohol was overturned. Just because this has happened does not mean it is the end, folks. It may be the beginning of the end or it may be the beginning of a turn-around. Maybe it had to go this far before things could turn around.

The real challenge with this decision is the free expression of religion. It is the free exercise thereby. What the world around us wants us to do is to say you can exercise your religion on Sunday morning. You can go to church and you can worship freely. But if you take your Christian values outside the four walls of your church and try to live on that basis at Exxon or the bank where you work or the hospital where you work or the school where you work, you cannot do that. That is limiting the free exercise of your religion. We have to understand that is where the battle is, on the free exercise of our convictions in the marketplace of the real world.

Justice Scalia pointed this out on the majority decision. He said, “According to the majority decision, Christians can continue to advocate and teach their views of marriage at church. The First Amendment guarantees the free exercise of religion, and that, he points out, is a word the court ominously did not use.”

(Slide 54) So what can Christians do? First of all we have to pray. We have to pray like we have never prayed before. We have to pray for our leaders and for our nations according to 1 Timothy 2:1–4. Second, we have to be armed with the facts. I have given you a lot of facts, some of which you may have never known. You need to know this and control the data. We have to know what the Bible says. We have to know the history of the United States and we have to know the myths about homosexuality. Hosea 4:6, “My people perish for a lack of knowledge.”

Third, do not give up. Do not lose hope. We live in the devil’s world. What do you expect it to do? We need to have a positive mental attitude based on faith in Christ. 1 Peter 3:15, “We are to be able to give an answer for the hope that is in us.” Lamentations 3:21, “This I recall to mind [doctrine] and therefore have hope.” Titus 2:13, “We’re looking forward to the blessed hope in the return of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Fourth, we are to increase our civic involvement. Whatever you are doing, you are not doing enough. We have to make time, develop relationships with your state and national representatives and senators. Write them letters. Send them e-mails. Call them. Put their phone numbers in your smart phone. Put them on speed dial. When you hear about things, call them and let them know so that your name becomes known in their office.

(Slide 55) Fifth, we need to support sound legislation. Find out who the candidates are who will appoint strict constructionist judges, and vote for strict constructionist judges, that is judges who will interpret the law literally. Vote for them in those local elections where we have a vote for judges. Sixth, after we do everything else, give thanks and continue to pray without ceasing. 1 Thessalonians 5:17–18. Let’s close in prayer.

“Father, thank you for the opportunity to study these things and to be reminded that we do believe the truth. The truth is validated by the studies conducted in the real world that homosexuality is not innocuous. It is not normal. It is not a harmless lifestyle, but it is very harmful in many different aspects and in many different ways. Many of things said about it are just flat lies and distortions and are used to justify and to legalize immoral and sinful behavior. Father, we recognize that we are all sinners and we are not to judge others. On the other hand, neither are we to allow sin to be legalized and act as if it perfectly legitimate and perfectly acceptable. Father, we pray that in these coming days, months, and years that as we face the new situations that as believers we can stand firm for the truth of your Word. We can demonstrate a gracious and kind and loving attitude to those who disagree with us and that we may always be ready to present the gospel and to encourage others that there is genuine true forgiveness at the Cross. We pray this in Christ’s name.”